Changing Gears II

Since my last post, plans had changed. Despite my desire to do the job myself, my Dad convinced me to do it over at David's, my Mom's cousin. So I put everything back together on the car and the three of us tackled it this past weekend.

And to be honest, I'm very glad I ended up doing it there. He has a heated garage, a lift, and every tool you can imagine to make things easier. He's also extremely knowledgeable. The three of us working on it also sped up the process, since we could each work on different areas simultaneously.

We had some trouble getting the engine/tranny out as a unit, so we ultimately decided to detach the two before removing them. We lifted the engine with a forklift and some chains. And we dropped the tranny out the bottom.

David set up the two transmissions side by side, and pointed out that the new one was missing a reverse-light switch. I called Quantum Mechanics and he recommended swapping the neck of the new tranny with the old one. We did so. I'm guessing the tranny they sent me was from an earlier year...when reverse lights weren't required. David cleaned up some things inside and also noticed that my throwout bearing was shot and that my ring gear was quite worn. Both of these things should have been replaced, or at least certainly brought to my attention, when I had the clutch replaced by Maiden England 3 or 4 years ago. If you recall, when I picked up the car from them, a headlight and the speedometer were both also not working and I had to fix both myself. Talk about incompetence. But I digress.

So we called it a day, ate lunch, and ordered the parts. I also ordered some less significant parts that could use replacing...gaskets and bolts and such. We're planning to reconvene as soon as the parts come in to put it all back together. Also, my Ziploc organizational method was thrown out the window from the get go. I'll let you know if that was a good idea in a few days.

I'm very excited to drive it when it's all said and done. And I have increasingly frequent thoughts of getting it painted. Now that it'll be up to snuff mechanically, I want it to look as good as it'll drive.